It’s a Tuesday night at Feinstein’s in New York City, and Deana Martin, Dean Martin’s daughter, is up on stage, all sparkles and sequins, belting out “Volare,” “Mambo Italiano” and other primo Dino classics. In between numbers, she rattles off some of her dad’s best one-liners faster than the Rat Pack can polish off a brace of martinis or chain-smoke through a carton of Luckys. It’s pure old-school Vegas, equal parts music, comedy and glitz, and the crowd is eating it up.
Deana, a self-described chip off the old block, comes to the State Theatre in Easton on April 25 for a tribute show to her iconic father and Frank Sinatra. Accompanied by a world-class quintet, she’ll bring with her such unforgettable Sinatra and Martin standards as “Strangers in the Night,” “The Lady is a Tramp” and “Everybody Loves Somebody,” as well as a host of other American Songbook classics.
She’ll even sing a duet with her father on video, and in between it all throw in some of Dino’s classic remarks. There will even be some audience participation (hint: brush up on “That’s Amore” and “Memories Are Made of This”).
The show marks the 40th anniversary of “The Dean Martin Variety Show,” broadcast on NBC for 264 episodes from 1965 to its closing April 5, 1974. Deana appeared frequently on the show, singing and clowning around with the likes of Elvis, the Beatles, Rosemary Clooney and Ella Fitzgerald.
Deana shares the same shape face and glint in the eyes as her dad, and a similar cool swagger in her voice. She even makes it all look easy. But that nonchalant naturalness, that smooth-as-silk delivery, is something nobody not even Sinatra could match.
“I was standing in the wings with Frank Sinatra — we always called him ‘Uncle Frank’ — just before going on to sing on the ‘Dean Martin Show,’” says Deana, 65. “I looked up at him and asked, ‘So Uncle Frank, how do you do it? How do you sing?’ He said, ‘Well, Deana, it’s all about the air. I take a deep breath and push up from the diaphragm, and I can tell even before a note comes out if it will be on pitch.’ So I said, ‘Really? Does my dad do that?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘your father has no idea what he’s doing — he just does it.’ It’s true, it was totally natural for him, a gift.”
Not that Deana herself isn’t gifted. She’s a consummate performer, recording artist, radio host and best-selling author. Her 2006 debut CD, “Memories Are Made of This,” stayed in the Top 10 for 40 consecutive weeks, and her latest album, “Destination Moon,” is receiving rave reviews. Since 2005, she’s been hosting a show on Sirius/XM satellite radio’s Siriusly Sinatra channel.
Deanas club acts take her from Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas to Harrah’s in Atlantic City. Her 2004 memoir, “Memories Are Made of This: Dean Martin Through His Daughter’s Eyes,” was on the New York Times best-seller list. Plans call for the book to be made into a movie, directed by actor Joe Mantegna, with a screenplay by actor/writer/television host Bonnie Hunt, and starring Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Like Sinatra, Deana had to work at her singing, although it certainly helped that her father, a perfectionist with perfect pitch, suggested she do it his way.
“When I first told my dad I wanted to take voice lessons, he said, ‘Why? Do you want to end up sounding like everyone else in the choir?’ He said you have to develop your own voice, your own style, so people will recognize you,” she says. “He probably didn’t realize that not everybody has a perfect natural voice. But I am grateful I took his advice, and started to sing before I took voice lessons, so that my vocal coach could help develop that style. He was so right in suggesting the order of learning to sing.”
Deana also learned a lot from Sinatra. “His timing and interpretation of songs was wonderful,” she says. “He taught me so much about phrasing, and that each time you sing a song, it will have another life, and a different meaning for you. That’s one reason he recorded so many of his songs so many times.”
Deana was in her teens when it first really hit her that her father was something special. “I remember the precise moment. It was in the Copa Room of the Sands in the early ’60s. I’m sitting there ringside, the whole stage was dark. Then there was a drumbeat, and the announcer appeared, saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, direct from the bar, Dean Martin.’ Then my dad would walk out in his tuxedo, and the crowd around me would go ‘oooh, there he is!’ It was such a feeling of excitement — I was like, oh my gosh, that’s my dad!”
Of course, Dino would then gaze squint-eyed at the audience, highball glass in hand, then walk over to the pianist or orchestra leader, and ask, “How long I be on?” The crowd would roar with laughter. But although Dean Martin liked his booze, he was no lush and would never drink during a performance.
“It’s still shocking to me that people think he was really like that,” Deana says. “I wish they knew he wasn’t drinking. That was his gimmick, his persona. I mean, how could he have done all that he did if he was drinking all the time?”
At home, Dean took his Rat Pack cool with him. “What you saw on the stage, on his TV show, that was him. First of all, he always looked good. He was always sweet and funny, and a big hugger. He was definitely an Italian father, he had his rules. It was his house, and if you didn’t like it, there was the door. But you know what, all us kids were good — we didn’t want to disappoint our dad. We were brought up right,” Deana says, referring to her three siblings — Dean Jr., Ricci and Gail — all by Martin’s first marriage to Elizabeth “Betty” Martin.
Deana made her television debut in 1966 on her father’s show, and got to hang out with the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five and even Elvis Presley. “To watch my dad up there singing with them was amazing. He could sing with anybody, and make them feel comfortable. But he would never rehearse. The stars would rehearse with the show’s music director Lee Hale, who would wear a sign around his neck that said ‘Dean.’
“My dad would come into the studio on a Sunday afternoon after playing golf, read his cue cards, put on his tuxedo, and go out and do the show,” Deana says.
Although meeting any of the heartthrobs who appeared on the show would be enough to send the average teenage girl into palpitations, surprisingly they weren’t the ones who made the biggest lasting impression. “Personally, for me, the most awesome people I met were Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney. I also adored meeting Petula Clark. Dad and Petula had some kind of amazing chemistry when they sang together,” Deana says.
There’s also some amazing chemistry to witness in “True Love,” the duet that Deana sings with her dad on “Destination Moon,” and will repeat in her State Theatre show, with Dino on a video screen. The story behind the recording is pretty amazing.
“We recorded that at Capitol Records, Studio A, the same studio my dad recorded in. My husband John Griffeth, who produced ‘Destination Moon’ with me, was actually able to find the original Nelson Riddle score of ‘True Love’ that my dad used. So there I am, holding my father’s sheet music — it even had ‘Dean’ written up in the corner in Nelson’s handwriting — and singing into the same microphone my dad used,” Deana says. “I couldn’t get through it the first time. When I listened to the playback, and heard our voices together, I just can’t tell you how I felt, they blended together so beautifully.”
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